Volcano

As promised, a volcano. Also done for a class tutorial project in Maya. I slapped a water-like plane and a sky sphere into the scene to give it a slightly more natural look. I also did not include sparks coming out of the volcano. Sparks are rendered with Maya Hardware, seeing as they are streaks, not sprites or clouds.

So, there is a sprite volume emitter spewing smoke (way too fast, by the way, but I didn't feel like tweaking the uniform field on it any longer). The volcano was made live, a curve drawn on the surface, and then it was made into a flow emitter with blobbies. Finally, there is a second volume emitter with cloud particles for the steam.

I found that working with particle systems is a heck of a lot of tweaking and fiddling, but it can be fun. Especially if you have a book nearby that you can read while it is rendering.

So, a volcano, in the middle of the ocean with nothing else around, on a bright sunny day.... 3D, maybe? Naw...